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Glimpses on Proverbs About Women in English and Albanian Language

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Glimpses on Proverbs About Women in English and Albanian Language Glimpses on Proverbs About Women in English And Albanian Language Fatma SHIJAKU University of Tirana, Faculty of Foreign Languages ABSTRACT In this study, we are going to explore the proverbs about women in English and Albanian language as depicted from English and Albanian written sources, mostly dictionaries with the aim of portraying the nature of women in their many aspects and roles assumed in the society such as appearance, virtuousness, diligence, verbal talent, intelligence, power and their roles as daughters, wives and mothers. The discussion draws on similarities and differences between Anglo-American proverbs and Albanian proverbs about women by investigating the proverbs’ content, figurativeness and cultural features. The proverbs corpus designed here stems from the proverbs found in “Oxford Dictionary of proverbs” (2015), “American proverbs about women” (Lois Kerschen, 1998), and the dictionary “Fjalë të urta të popullit shqiptar” (“Wise sayings of Albanian people” as translated in English), (Folklor shqiptar, “Fjalë të urta të popullit shqiptar”, sektori i prozës dhe i poezisë popullore, Jorgo Panajoti and Agron Xhagolli, 1983). Keywords: Contrastive paremiology, woman, English proverbs, Albanian proverbs 1. INTRODUCTION A study on contrastive paremiology regarding the semantic field of the gender patterns would be a multifaceted and fascinating enterprise that in its complexity would encompasses many fields of study, such as history, linguistics, folklore, sociology, anthropology, ethnography, etc. In this study we endeavor to explore the proverbs about women in English and Albanian language as depicted from English and Albanian dictionaries with the aim of portraying the nature of women in their many aspects and roles assumed in the society: such as appearance, virtuousness, diligence, verbal talent, intelligence, power and their roles as wives, mothers, daughters by drawing on the similarities and differences between Anglo-American proverbs and Albanian proverbs in terms of the proverbs’ content, figurativeness (mainly metaphors) and some cultural features. The paper discusses a specific number of examples from the corpus of Anglo-American and Albanian proverbs containing terms related to women. The proverbs which contain metaphors referring to women are analyzed in order to establish the similarities and differences between the metaphors used in English and Albanian language. Some proverbs can have a literal meaning. On the other hand, many proverbs contain metaphors. As it is known, “metaphor allows conventional mental imagery from sensorimotor domains to be used for domains of subjective experience” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999, p. 45). In this paper we will focus on some metaphors referring to women in English and Albanian proverbs. For the purpose of this study we have compiled a parallel corpus consisting of approximately 200 proverbs in English and Albanian (100 proverbs for each language). The proverbs have been collected from the original sources (dictionaries, books of proverbs). The richest Albanian collection of 13 TURKOPHONE Glimpses on Proverbs About Women in English And Albanian Language proverbs used is “Fjale te urta te popullit shqiptar” (“Wise sayings of Albanian people” as translated in English), (see Folklor shqiptar, “Fjalë të urta të popullit shqiptar”, sektori i prozës dhe i poezisë popullore, Jorgo Panajoti and Agron Xhagolli, 1983), and the richest English source is “Oxford Dictionary of proverbs” (6 edition, edited by Jennifer Speake, 2015 and “American proverbs about women” (see Lois Kerschen, 1998). The two parts are analyzed contrastively. The methodology used in this analysis is contrastive and descriptive. The proverbs are collected, analyzed and compared thematically and semantically, therefore the ideological-thematic and semantic system of classification of the corpus is applied. By way of a general characterization, the proverbs are not text-based or referring to certain contexts of use. The methods applied rely on collection and classification of authentic data from dictionaries (holding that dictionaries provide abundant facts which facilitate the work) into thematic groups. Contrastive method is applied to reveal features of sameness and differences in the lexical meaning and semantic structure of proverbs as well as metaphors wrapped in images in English and Albanian. Each Albanian proverb is accompanied by its English translation, which clarifies the meaning of the whole structure and lexemes used. While in some cases when an English equivalent (or very similar) proverb is easily identified, still, in certain other cases literal translation has been adopted to make the meaning more transparent and bring forth the different images used in Albanian. Further in the paper, regional proverbs of Albanian and Anglo-American are described, which illustrate the diversity of dialects and varieties in both languages. 2. RATIONALE Mieder dwells on the fact that “The wisdom expressed in proverbs is actually quite similar from culture to culture. That is why so many proverbs have found a wide distribution beyond national borders and why there are so many equivalent proverbs that might have different images and structures, but that mean the same thing!” (Mieder, , 22004), p.34), which makes one reflect on the relevance of this belief by contrasting the proverbial wisdom about women in the proverb lore of English and Albanian language. Which are the values attributed to women in English and Albanian language? What is the treatment and the rights granted to them by the society? What’s the nature of the relationship that they establish in the family like? How are their rites of passage from daughter to wife and mother portrayed? Little is done to include invaluable interpretive comments about the Albanian proverbs in general and the more so about proverbs about women when inquiring about the, origin, history, dissemination, structure, meaning, use, and function of proverbs (Panajoti and Xhagolli, 1983). Such contrastive analysis in English and Albanian might add to the attempts made to give more interpretation to the proverbs about women in both languages, especially in Albanian through a contrastive descriptive analysis. 3. PROVERBS AS LEXICAL ELEMENTS AND TRADITIONAL SIGNS OF CULTURAL VALUES Many definitions of proverbs are provided. Prominent linguist and paremiologist W. Mieder names 55 definitions of proverbs in his article “Popular views of the proverb” (Mieder, 1999). A great diversity of issues pertaining to culture, folklore, history, stereotypes, politics and worldview are analyzed by tracing proverbs of one’s proper culture. In this paper, we have viewed proverbs as lexical elements (by retrieving them from the dictionary) and traditional signs of cultural values (by contrasting and describing their content and images used in both languages) complying with the linguistic approach to Cilt / Volume: 4 • Sayı / Issue: 2 • Kasım / November 2017 14 Fatma SHIJAKU proverbs as David Cram has clearly shown in his article on “The Linguistic Status of the Proverb” (1983) and with the views of many other linguists such as Mieder and Sobieski, Alan Dundes, Zuzana Profantová, Geoffrey M. White, Peter Grzybek, Jani Thomaj, Jorgo Panajoti and Agron Xhagolli, etc. holding that proverbs and other phraseological units represent “a language of culture”(Telija, 1998, cited in Skandera, 2007: 207). Cram and other linguists argue that the proverb should be viewed as a lexical element with a quotational status. The proverb is a lexical element in the sense that it is a syntactic string of words that is learned and reused as a single unit with a fixed internal and external structure. Its quotational status derives from the fact that proverbs are typically invoked or cited rather than straightforwardly asserted. In fact, proverbs often are quoted with such introductory formulas as “my grandfather used to say,” “it is true that,” “everybody knows that,” and even more directly “the proverb says” (Cram, 1983 cited in Mieder 1994: 132). On the other hand, proverbs are much valued and analyzed as traditional signs of cultural values. As it is known elsewhere, cultural and social historians, folklorists, linguists, and paremiologists have expended much energy in studying proverbs both as expressions of national character and cultural worldview (Mieder 1982, 1990, 1993, 2001; Mieder and Sobieski 2003). Despite the drawbacks that the former approach to proverbs holds in conjuring up “a certain preconceived stereotypical view of a nation or an ethnic or social minority”(Mieder 2008, p.144), at the same time, it is important to know what proverbs are in actual and frequent use among a certain population in order to reach at least some conclusions about commonly held values (Mieder, 2008: 145). As Zuzana Profantová has put it “the proverbial tradition [must be understood] as a cultural-historical and social phenomenon” (Profantová, 1998: 302-307). In any case, proverbs and other phraseological units represent “a language of culture”(Telija, 1998, p.783) that permits scholars to draw valid conclusions about the worldview or mentality of those speakers who make vigorous and continued use of them. In a fascinating article on “Proverbs and Cultural Models: An American Psychology of Problem Solving” (1987), Geoffrey M. White has shown that proverbs “accomplish both conceptual and pragmatic work”, i.e., they express generalities based on experiences and observations and are used to make moral or ethical recommendations
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